[M.R.Victor]

I agree with you CIA and this article simply uses a broad brush to drum up a semblance of substance to feed a common Torontonian complaint: no moar condos... too boxy, to glassy blah blah blah.

If we were being perfectly honest here, if we were to tally up the new condominiums which are replacing mom-and-pop storefronts with blank glass lobbies or bank branches or whatever, I think we'd come up with a fairly small number.

Bitch an moan as we might about Cityplace, it was built on top of a former golf course. Aura, shitty as it may be at ground level, was built atop a parking lot. Meanwhile there are countless examples of new builds that attempt, at least in some way, to integrate with their surroundings, and there are plenty of examples which do this really, really well.

To conclude, I feel the article has no substance and is simply stirring up negative public sentiment. Not every street will be a cornucopia of sensory experiences, but the devil is in the details. I could just as well complain about the abject pedestrian experience walking through Museumplatz in Vienna, because ultimately, there are no shops, the building sits on a superblock, and a facade of stone is not quantifiably more interesting than one made of glass. I say this in jest, but I hope you'll get the point.